“That this was no unfounded boast, as regards one department of learning, has been already shown, in enumerating the learned divines who drew upon Aberdeen the general attention soon after the death of their bishop and master. In secular learning it was no less distinguished. No one excelled Robert Gordon of Straloch in all the accomplishments that honour the country gentleman. Without the common desire of fame or any more sordid motive, he devoted his life and talents to illustrate the history and literature of his country. He was the prime assistant to Scotstarvet in his two great undertakings, the Atlas and the collections of Scotch poetry.[23] The maps of Scotland in the Great Atlas (many of them drawn by himself, and the whole ‘revised’ by him at the earnest entreaty of Charles I.), with the topographical descriptions that accompany them, are among the most valuable contributions ever made by an individual to the physical history of his country. His son, James Gordon, parson of Rothiemay, followed out his father’s great objects with admirable skill, and in two particulars he merits our gratitude even more. He was one of the earliest of our countrymen to study drawing, and to apply it to plans and views of places; and, while he could wield Latin easily, he condescended to write the history of his time in excellent Scotch. “While these writers were illustrating the history of their country in prose, a crowd of scholars were writing poetry, or, at least, pouring forth innumerable copies of elegant Latin verses. While the two Johnstons were the most distinguished of those poets of Aberdeen, John Leech, once Rector of our University,[24] David Wedderburn, rector of the Grammar School, and many others, wrote and published pleasing Latin verse, which stands the test of criticism. While it cannot be said that such compositions produce on the reader the higher effects of real poetry, they are not without value, if we view them as tests of the cultivation of the society among which they were produced. Arthur Johnston not only addresses elegiacs to the bishop and his doctors, throwing a charming classical air over their abstruser learning, but puts up a petition to the magistrates of the city, or celebrates the charms of Mistress Abernethy, or the embroideries of the Lady Lauderdale—all in choice Latin verse, quite as if the persons whom he addressed appreciated the language of the poet.[25] “Intelligent and educated strangers, both foreigners and the gentry of the north, were attracted to Aberdeen; and its colleges became the place of education for a higher class of students than had hitherto been accustomed to draw their philosophy from a native source.[26]